It has become commonplace in operating rooms (ORs) for surgeons and other personnel to refer to many different types of visual patient data during surgical procedures. For example, a surgeon may refer to digital photographs and video from magnetic resonance imaging equipment, computed tomography scanning equipment, x-ray equipment, three-dimensional ultrasound equipment, endoscopic equipment, 3D computer modeling equipment, patient monitoring equipment, medical records databases, and other equipment during a surgical procedure.
ORs therefore typically include many display devices positioned at various locations that are expected to be viewable during a procedure. Personnel may refer to display devices hung from a ceiling, mounted from a wall, supported on a cart, etc. However, it is difficult or not possible to position the display devices for convenient viewing by all necessary personnel. Mentally translating between the orientation of information shown on display devices that are angularly offset from the orientation of a patient's body can be particularly difficult, prone to errors, or inefficiently time-consuming for personnel during a procedure. Moreover, frequent shifting of focal reference from a patient surgical site to remotely located display devices may result in fatigue and have a deleterious effect on quality of the procedure.
Another difficulty surgeons and other personnel have is relating what is viewed on the display devices to precise locations on a patient. For example, it can be difficult for a surgeon to identify where a particular location within a displayed x-ray or other image corresponds to on the patient. Moreover, a surgeon may use a 3D anatomical model to practice before a procedure, but may not be able to effectively use the model during surgery because of the inherent difficulty of relating the model to the patient in real-time.